


Painting Your Portrait

by choicescarfsylveon



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Artist Sebastian, Barista Santana, Depression, Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls, Hipster Sebastian, M/M, Muse Kurt, Sebastian Gets High On Adderall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-16 10:13:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12340641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choicescarfsylveon/pseuds/choicescarfsylveon
Summary: "What are you doing?""Painting your portrait."AU, Sebastian meets Kurt in a coffee shop one day and starts sketching him from afar.





	Painting Your Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> This was a story I wrote three or four years ago that I've revived for the present day. Enjoy <3

Sebastian Smythe is already having an off morning. As he enters the Pot Kettle Black coffee shop, his migraine is splitting. This is because he needs his caffeine fix stat, but also because can’t afford to fill his Adderall right now. His prescription for his horn-rimmed glasses is in long need of re-adjustment too, and right now they sit crooked and too tight on the bridge of his nose, adding to the pinch behind his eyes.

 

Sebastian’s grateful to find only one person standing in line before him, a pale man wearing a blue paisley shirt. But it seems the guy’s determined to take forever with the menu, chatting up the usual head barista Santana in a cheerful, high-pitched voice.

 

“I’m not sure if I should go with the melange, the con panna, or the house flat white today. What do you think?”

 

“Well the melange and con panna are made with the Seattle-based Sperl beans, which we roast in the back of house. Literally I just got done with today’s batch at 5 a.m., so those'll be be your best-tasting. Right now our house white’s brewed with Julianna brand beans.”

 

“Oh, we had those where I just moved from.”

 

“Aw, where’s that?”

 

“Bainbridge, Ohio.”

 

Their innocent chatter continues on for at least another minute, and Sebastian feels his patience wearing thin. It isn’t helping that the guy in front of him happens to smell heavenly. His voice is really nice, too, and his pants really accentuate his legs. It all just reminds Sebastian of how long its been for him. Clearly his solitariness has dipped to levels so low, he’s now balking at the backs of mildly annoying strangers.

 

Finally the man’s cluelessness about today’s menu seems to be coming to an end, as he turns to dig around in his satchel. His profile is quite stunning, and Sebastian feels his artist’s gears whirring even at this slight glimpse of high cheekbone. But Sebastian swears, if he takes one more minute to pick a drink—

 

“You know,” the man stops digging in his bag, “I’m just gonna go with the Julianna, I think. Boring and safe. Unless—“

 

“Not buying something local or home grown from this place is a slap in the face to the craft coffee scene,” Sebastian mumbles to himself, staring up in agony at the ceiling. “Basic ass might as well have gone to Starbucks.”

 

He planned on the rant being inaudible to the stranger, but the man's sharp turn and dirty look lets him know that his slip of the tongue was heard.

 

The man's face, as Sebastian guessed, is exquisite. Skin flawless and clear, eyes big, striking glasz. The view is over far too soon.

 

“You know what?” The man turns back to the barista, abandoning his search for his wallet. “Could I actually sample all three? I mean clearly, we’ve got plenty of time here.”

 

“Oh my god.”

 

“Sure.” The barista smirks, catching on to the farce. “Take your time, hon.”

 

She gets to work on the samples while Sebastian tries to assert himself.

 

“Could you at least let me get in line in front of you?” he says to the man. “Not all of us are Midwestern prairie dogs with no idea how decent coffee works—”

 

“Okay,” the man spits, not turning around, “I’m already not having a very good day and you look like a self-important James Franco wannabe who just got out of bed five minutes ago.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

Sebastian can’t act like that doesn’t smart as he _did_ just kind of just get out of bed five minutes ago. Or at least, five minutes before he walked down the stairs from his loft, and had to deal with this shit.

 

“Pick your poison.” Santana returns to the counter with the mini-sized drinks, and Sebastian watches as the man takes the slowest sips in existence. Commenting on flavor profiles he’s clearly making up as he goes, Sebastian _knows, he’s_ had every drink on the menu—

 

“Oh, yeah, the white is definitely my winner,” the man decides. He digs around in his bag again, then:

 

“I’m so sorry. My wallet’s in my car.”

 

“Come _on.”_

 

The man traipses through the glass doors and turns the nearest corner. Sebastian doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s smiling.

 

“Can you ring me up before that dunce gets back?” Sebastian says. “I’ll have the usual, but with—”

 

“I would,” the barista interrupts, “but it’s _hilarious_ how much this is getting to you today.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

The man soon returns to take his order to-go, and leaves a fifteen dollar tip. Sebastian’s bleary gaze follows him all the way out.

 

Sebastian kind of hates the tourists that filter through here sometimes, but he wanders down to Pot Kettle Black most every morning, to work through his thwarting art block. He’s a fine graphic artist and recent college dropout who specializes in charcoal and pencil prints. His latest sheepskin sketchbook is more empty than inspired, and has been increasingly over the last year. Right now though, his inspiration has been suddenly fueled by the irritating spark he’d just felt with the beautiful stranger.

 

Seated at his usual round table, Sebastian captures his soon to be fleeting memory of the man manga panel style: cursing him out with tears in his eyes, excite lines all around him, a dialog tag reading “blah blah blah you stupid hipster blah blah!”

 

He signs it, dates it, and titles it, ‘He said I look like a James Franco wannabe. Is this shade or an actual compliment?’ Goes to retrieve his coffee at the counter, opens a new page. Sits. Sits and sits, thoughtless and stuck. God, here it is again. The heavy, boring slumber that’s become his life.

 

This morning his imagination is feeling rather muted by his latest no-medication stint. He’s tired of drawing dreary charcoal coffee cups and palm plants, nondescript pools and forest acres. It’s been two years since he dropped out of his prestigious art school, and he currently lives in isolation. His major depression is increasing in droves and his commissions are decreasing in them too.

 

Desperately, he feels that he needs a new subject, a spark. Something to remind him why he again chose the masochistic life of those who struggle to define the undefinable.

 

Three days later, Sebastian’s desperation is somewhat soothed when that man turns up in the shop once again. Wearing a cerulean blue sweater, turning heads in thigh high boots, the man decides to take his coffee tableside this time, stay a while. Sebastian can’t take his eyes off him, remembering their tiff, watching him take graceful strides to and from his chosen seat. Watching as he plugs headphones in, thumbs through a small book, licks his finger with the turn of every page.

 

Sebastian gets that itch, one hand beginning to sketch the outline of what he sees on the page. The stranger’s figure is all proportionate, crossed legs all shapely and perfect. Only equipped with pencils, Sebastian makes a note on the page to “fill the sweater in like ocean,” later on.

 

He continues the sketch in his studio apartment over three glasses of wine later on that night. His place has become cluttered and dusty, burgundy paint on the walls chipped, succulents dying in windows, and discarded medicine bottles, unpaid bills and rootless art supplies on every surface.

 

But despite the cloudiness that suffocated him all day, his focus is razor sharp on the portrait tonight. Hunched over the stool before the large steel easel set up in front of the couch, which he sleeps in, his mind fills in the details and features of a man that he can’t possibly be sure of yet.

 

Adding his personal style and color to his memory of the stranger’s luminous skin does give him a small thrill. He’s able to be generous with greens and blues for veins and shadows, copious with red and pink for flush. The blue sweater takes on a life of its own, becoming the sea and the portrait’s background; he weaves it into waves and whitewash, enhancing it with watercolor.

 

Stares at it after three hours, finally finding it worthy, and titling it,

 

‘Who are you?’

 

The next morning, Sebastian finds the man there again, this time wearing red, and with a friend. He’s grateful for his muse’s distraction in the friend, and the facial expressions he’s making at her. He renders several of these animated faces in bust form, labeling them each. ‘Shocked,’ ‘gossipy,’ ‘he didn’t wait long enough to drink and burned his tongue,’ ‘so excited.’

 

Next time, his distant model is dressed in all black, turtleneck swathed up his long neck, his nose red as he thumbs through a leather-bound novel. Sebastian notices the three white roses sticking out from under the lapel of his satchel. From all the way across the shop, Sebastian can feel the man’s pain in his own chest tangibly, and the emotion is ever apparent on his face. It pulls his heartstrings, and even though he doesn’t know him, Sebastian wishes he could lift the sadness from him.

 

Instead, he draws him lying on bed of white rose petals, at peace.

 

‘What troubles you?’

 

The morning pass like this for weeks; Sebastian finds himself pathetically antsy, guts churning, whenever his muse takes a step into the room. The man always chooses a table so far from his secret artist’s, always engaged in something far more entrancing. He doesn’t seem to notice.

 

One day though, Sebastian makes the mistake of staring too long, too hard; he just can’t make out the details of that face from behind his weakened glasses. When suddenly his muse is looking up at him, pointed and curious, Sebastian ducks his head. Wipes his nose with his lead-dirty fingertips and feels his heart racing.

 

Quickly sketches up and titles the image he has frozen in his mind, of his subject staring back at him:

 

‘Why do I feel this way about you?’

 

He realizes that he needs to see the face up close again, if he’s ever really going to capture him. The next time he sees him in line, he gets up and stands after him, even though he’s already had his coffee.

 

He just knows that the man can tell its him, that he is Actively Trying To Ignore Him, then finally: he turns around all sharp like he did the very first time, squinting those eyes.

 

“Are you following me?”

 

Sebastian is taken aback the question, and he forgot how supple the man’s voice was.

 

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Sebastian manages, “seeing as how I don’t even know your name.”

 

“It’s Kurt.”

 

That’s it, that’s all Sebastian gets before the man steps before the counter, clearly having figured out his favorite drink by now. He orders it in just seconds, floats back to his table like an apparition, but Sebastian got what he went for. Eyelashes and barely there freckles, earlobes and the slight pout of his lip. Details.

 

He goes back to the drawing board, completing the best and most hyper-realistic drawing yet. A steel bucket of water being thrown down on the man from overhead, and him on his knees, laughing from the shock of it. Wearing nothing besides drenched, skin-tight khakis, kneeling in mud full of budding hydrangeas, skin open and bare and Sebastian lets himself imagine. What he guesses would be the outline of his dick beneath those jeans, how each muscle in his body might curve.

 

‘If you knew how I saw you, I think that you would freak.’

 

Okay, so he is kind of following Kurt.

 

 

 

 

Kurt knows when someone’s staring at him.

 

Call it leftovers from a life being ‘that effiminate gay guy’ who doesn’t even have to open his mouth, for people to know. Call it the hyper-awareness that he’s new in town, that everyone on this crowded hipster block just paces away from his university knows each other. He has long grown past his anxieties about standing out in a crowded room though, now finding it one of his greatest assets.

 

That’s why he knows the hot asshole from a month ago, the one who all but called him a basic ass white girl, is watching him whenever they’re both in the coffee shop together. It’s not the worst way to be stared at. Despite his stereotypical appearance, the grungy five o’clock shadow, the glasses, and the brooding, holier-than-thou expression, the man is quite the looker. He has the kind of boyish face that never ages, with smile-creases all around his sultry green eyes, and fixed line of a mouth. He frowns constantly now, Kurt guesses probably angsting about the meaning of art and Nietzsche and the human condition, or from having done drugs.

 

But he probably used to smile a lot once.

 

Definitely looks like the kind of guy his friends, mother and father warned him about when he moved to this city. Those are always the ones he falls for, the jaded ones, the prickly ones, the hard to get to know.

 

He’s an artist, that’s for sure, his nose practically lives in the sketchbook he carries with him every day. He hardly moves from his corner table, not even to pee, and his hands are always charcoal grey and black from smudging pencil.

 

Whatever it is he draws has him intensely focused. Sometimes his glasses fog up when he forgets to put the lid back on his drink. But he's always too far in the zone to ever bother dabbing them. It makes Kurt want to do it for him.

 

The stranger definitely takes moments from his work to stare across at Kurt, though. Kurt has caught him several times by now, and knows the game. But Kurt isn’t going to let him get away with being a pretentious snob that one time.

 

He realizes the guy is making a point of standing in line behind him on purpose one day, so he asks him.

 

"Are you following me?"

 

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” the man’s voice was rough from disuse, which Kurt found hot, “seeing as how I don’t even know your name.”

 

Okay, that was smooth. So Kurt decides to give a little.

 

He leaves after letting the man know his name to give the illusion of a chase. The man returns to his table and Kurt waits until he sees him bow his head deep in that sketchbook.

 

Kurt walks up to the barista, and quietly asks if he can see “that guy over there”’s receipt from his last purchase.

 

“Yeah, I can’t let you do that. Legal reasons. Or something.”

 

“It’s just, he bought my coffee once before, a-and I’m kind of looking to repay him—“

 

“Okay, that is so obviously a lie. Are you stalking him?”

 

“What? No!”

 

Santana smirks at his thinly veiled reaction, and chucks open her drawer to dig it out.

 

“Since this is clearly a gay romantic coffee shop fanfiction, I’m not gonna be the one to keep the jaded lovers apart.”

 

He finds he has to leave the building in order to keep his dignity, uncrumple the receipt and search for the name in tiny print. But in his subsequent search, typing on his phone and pacing just outside coffee shop doors, he doesn’t find anyone by the name Sebastian Smythe on social media, or in any media at all. No traces of the scruffy artist anywhere. He doesn't even have a website for his art.

 

The next time they see each other, the artist is clearly out of sorts, and looks deeply stressed. He doesn’t order anything, and doesn’t open his sketchbook. Frustrated, he types a few things into his phone, then curls over on the table using the book as a pillow. He sleeps restlessly for a few moments, nose buried in the crook of his elbow, frowning through what must be some kind of sleep paralysis.

 

He soon gets up and leaves solemnly, and Kurt notices after far too long that he left his book at the table. Interest piqued, he looks around to see if anyone else has noticed, but his fellow cafégoers are steeped in their laptops. Presently, Kurt eyes the front counter to see if the barista is watching him, and for a moment when she isn’t, he takes all his stuff and Casually shifts himself over to the artist’s table.

 

He re-sets up his iPad and novel and pens like he didn’t just move to take a peek. But he doesn’t find it in him to keep up the farce for very long, heat on his face as he peels open the cover.

 

 _Oh my god, this is so totally fine,_ he thinks. He’s acting like artists aren’t constantly begging to have their works reviewed by others. Sebastian’s sketchbook at first is totally normal and unassuming. Written in his fine handwriting, his full name, the date he started, his address and his phone number make for a very pedestrian introduction.

 

But Kurt has butterflies in his stomach as he slowly sifts through the first pages, becoming more and more stunned as he moves through them. Here are rather haunting and dark depictions of inanimate objects, lonesome and chilling; broken cups on a never-ending table; looming forests that would like a nightmare to get lost in; sleek unrippled swimming pools reflecting eerie skies above them; a panicked hand grasping out from under the ocean's surface.

 

There are others that move him too, especially a self portrait in which Sebastian is half naked and staring into a mirror, morose. He managed to capture his own details, the minute pinches of his brow, the shadows under his eyes, his own pain staring back at him so well, that Kurt almost feels uncomfortable looking at him.

 

 _Oh my god, this is intimate._ This is like him willingly reading the private diary of someone else. Artists do this instead of spill their guts out to other people, and who knows what of Sebastian's heart is spilling here.

 

He swears he’s going to stop, just text the guy innocently and pretend he never looked, that he just happened to stumble upon it.

 

But on the next page, he finds himself.

 

Kurt finds himself symbolized as a weepy cartoon in black ink. He feels half offended and half euphoric at the unflattering but weirdly adorable depiction of him, and doesn’t expect to find what he sees next.

 

When he turns to the next, his heart skips a beat, and his mouth falls open a little bit. He finds that deep cerulean blue, his favorite sweater he recognizes, becoming the ocean. Finds his own face, clear as day, pretty and memorized and _detailed._

 

“Oh my god.” He keeps flipping through the pages of him, finding them all marked with Sebastian’s loopy signature and the date. Every single one of them has a purposeful caption. The one of him in all black on white roses, from the day one his classmates had been hit by a drunk driver—Kurt doesn’t know what to say, what he will say, he almost tears up.

 

Each drawing becomes more and more accurate, extraordinarily so. It feels less like he’s been stalked or watched or upset, and more like somehow, he’s been understood.  _He sees me._

 

The last one of him soaking wet, shirtless, flushed and laughing, actually makes him so painfully self-aware, he shuts the book.

 

He doesn’t want to give it back now. Why should he? When at least half of it wouldn’t exist without him? He will, he’ll give the sketchbook back, but he hurriedly packs it into his satchel first. Not without stealing it away at home for himself first. He realizes that’s selfish.

 

That night he looks at them again, wonders and romances himself sick. ‘What troubles you?’ ‘You make this face when you really like the book you’re reading. Cute.’ ‘I’m crazy. You have no idea how you look to me. I’m crazy.’ The artist speaking to him makes Kurt feel like his soul is a window, wide open.

 

 

 

 

Sebastian’s seriously depressed he lost his book. He hadn’t slept the night before, or before that. He’s feeling lower than he has in a long time.

 

A whole year’s worth of labor, sweat and broken lead just gone in a moment’s time. What on god’s shit postmodern earth was the point of being a fine artist? This was why his asshole friends in art school used to do their work digitally. How is he ever going to make a living with his tired hands?

 

The foggy morning he wandered out of Pot Kettle Black and back up to bed without the book, he was exhausted from realizing the state he’s in. His gas bill is so overdue, its due to get shut off. Its winter in Washington. He’s going to freeze. He barely made enough for rent from his few commissions this month, and two of his clients complained his quality wasn’t up to usual. He’s managed to his get his hands on some pills the last few days, but just a handful, from his sketchy old art school connect he doesn't trust.

 

He wanders back into the shop the morning after, having taken one or three too many Adderall, needing some relief. He hopes a good Samaritan submitted his life’s work to the space behind the counter, since he got no calls last night. But Santana laments to him that they don’t have that particular brand in stock.

 

“However,” she says, “I do recognize the person who picked it up.”

 

Even through the high, Sebastian is deeply angered by this thought. “Someone _stole_ it?”

 

“Don’t work your blood pressure up, the guy’s completely harmless. He’s the super pale one who stares at you when you’re in, though not _nearly_ as often as you stare at him. What? You two are regulars, we notice this kind of thing. He asked for one of your receipts the other day, giving some bullshit story about how he needed to pay you back or something. I don’t know, the whole thing is kind of cute. No, actually, just creepy. Anyway, ghost boy has your book.”

 

Sebastian’s head spins as he wanders out of line without ordering, sits back down elbows to table, head in hands. The concentrated focus of the drug isn’t helping his mortification. The idea of his stranger, the one he’s fancied into someone intimate to him unwarranted, knowing that he has fantasized about him, even drawing him soaking wet and on his knees—

 

He should just go home now, go home into his dirty loft and dig up another book, start over. Find another too expensive local shop burrow in, find another strange model to stare at.

 

Kurt wanders in that morning with the sketchbook clutched tightly to chest, hoping it will keep his heart from falling out. There his artist is, sitting alone, waiting for him. Looking like he’s contemplating his existence.

 

“Sebastian? Here. I’m sorry.”

 

The artist resolutely does not look into Kurt’s eyes as he takes the book in hands, slowly.

 

“Do I—“ Kurt stalls, his heart beating wildly as he surveys the details of Sebastian’s face. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

 

“No, you don’t. I just like the way you look. Or something.”

 

Kurt takes it, barreling forward then, into his confession. 

 

“I’ve never been—no one’s ever looked at me this way. This close. I mean, your work, it—I nearly cried, reading through this. And not just because the latter half of it was of me. The colors, the shadows, the pain, the emotion in the first half. It’s really something, you have here. Beautiful.”

 

Sebastian knows he has a pull, decides to take a stab in the dark.

 

“Helps when the subject matter is compelling.”

 

He’s looking Kurt in the eye now, and Kurt doesn’t want to play games. He suddenly just wants him.

 

“I would do this for you you know,” he says boldly. “Let you draw me like, actually. Professionally.”

 

“Well, Kurt, I’m not professional, but I do have a studio. I’ve got some ideas.”

 

 

 

 

Sebastian takes him upstairs into his loft, and Kurt surveys the space. High, wooden ceilings, steel supporting beams, dark burgundy walls, heavy draperies. Dead plants, laundry, art supplies scattered everywhere. Empty pill bottles.

 

“You can have a seat on the couch.” Sebastian sits before his giant easel, sifting through his favorite charcoal set, not setting an eye on Kurt at all as he prepares. He is so intensely focused on what he’s about to do that it hasn’t even set in yet, that his muse followed him here.

 

Kurt sits on the couch and unzips his long boots, watching Sebastian not watch him.

 

“How do you want me?”

 

At this, the artist’s eyes do flicker over briefly. The flat line of his mouth twinges slightly. But his expression is otherwise absent, glazed over.

 

“Any way you’re comfortable.” His voice is light and conversational though, betraying the haze seems in. “I usually like my models nude, but definitely don’t feel the need to accommodate me there.”

 

Kurt does strip naked for him, clinical, slow and unassuming, like he’s all alone in a changing room. Sebastian hasn’t looked at him at all, not in lust or with want or even just curiosity. As such, Kurt is completely soft. But he’s at peace with his sudden and brazen exposure to a stranger, more than he’s ever been in his life.

 

Sebastian knows that it's happened, the sounds of zippers and fabric ruffling definitely turn him on, as a soundtrack. But fuck if he isn’t anxious to drown himself in this work, so much so he stays glued on the blank page, the void, in front of him. How it’s going to be positioned, what background he’s lightly sketching on it.

 

Until Kurt mentions to him,

 

“It’s cold in here.”

 

Fuck, Sebastian didn’t pay the gas bill. He just invited this gorgeous model into his freezing depressing den, on the couch where he lives/sleeps. And god, wasn’t he just perfect, angelic? Kurt’s body is all taut muscle and lucent, clear skin, his soft dick red and curved against his thigh.

 

Sebastian stands up and walks towards him. He thinks he might just collapse with those eyes on him trained and anticipating, but he holds it together. He deigns to touch Kurt’s skin, lightly tilting his ingénue’s chin up with his fingers.

 

“I’ve got a space heater somewhere,” he promises. “Give me a minute to find it?”

 

He returns, plugging the rusted machine into the wall and then kneeling just before Kurt. Kurt is starting to get hard, the moment he’d been left alone to realize what was happening sending his aroual through the roof. Kurt doesn't know why he trusts him, but sitting here watching Sebastian watch him, he knows he should feel comfort. He knows he is ready, unafraid.

 

Sebastian starts touching Kurt’s face in daft strokes with the pad of his thumb. Caressing every curve of bone and cartilage, even the unimportant ones, giving an especially long tug across Kurt’s lower lip.

 

Sebastian’s strokes then progress to his neck and his chest, and Kurt inhales deeply. He’s straining hard now, but Sebastian’s eyes are only enamored with the skin he’s touching presently.

 

“What are you doing?” Kurt exhales.

 

Sebastian says, “Painting your portrait.”

 

That isn’t bullshit, or a line Sebastian uses to get into his models’ pants. He genuinely just wants to touch them, craves to feel their bone structure. Innocently, like a student of anatomy, just wanting to understand how a frame works. Kurt’s is so incredible, all of those proportions lining up just the way he imagined.

 

Kurt’s eyes slip shut when Sebastian starts dragging his thumbs across Kurt’s ribs. Sebastian lets himself look down at Kurt’s hard length, dizzy from the lurid pornography of it. He isn’t going to test those waters now, ending his trail at Kurt’s hip bones.

 

He goes back to his post, and Kurt practically shudders at the loss of him.

 

“Sit up straight.”

 

The next hour is spent in bone-chilling silence, though the heat blowing along Kurt’s skin is making him more and more attracted. Kurt isn’t sure if he should talk, though he isn’t sure what he’d say, and Sebastian can’t manage it besides a few directions. “Tilt your chin up a bit,” “move your elbow to the right,” “look at me again,” “hold still.” He is lucidly focused on the work, the look in his eyes calculating, and the gift at the end of the session proves it.

 

Kurt comes around to sit on Sebastian’s lap in the after, reviewing the canvas with his artist. Sebastian wraps his arms around him, nuzzling his shoulder with his chin, totally calm.

 

“Wow,” Kurt breathes. And wow is right. That was him, splitting image, pencil and grayscale, that was him. His body, just how he had always known it. Incredible.

 

“Thank you,” Sebastian says, kissing his shoulder.

 

Kurt laughs. “Thank me? No.  _Y_ _ou_ are the one, with all the talent.”

 

Kurt kisses him, and Sebastian wastes no time picking him up, letting him straddle him.

 

Sebastian holds him up and lets his hands be generous, squeezing and grappling, getting a feel for all that skin. Kurt’s body is radiating heat against him. He lays Kurt down on the couch, and Kurt’s hands are shaking, as they undress him.

 

Sebastian makes love to him like he hasn’t made love in a long time. Kurt holds onto him tight, his thighs squeezing around him. Their fuck is passionate, like two people who know each other. At the end of it, Sebastian feels like he’s alive again.

 

Kurt rests his head on Sebastian’s chest, circling his fingers in a pattern along his skin that only he knows.

 

“Have you ever had déjà vu about a person? Because just now, I felt like I knew you once. Not actually, not before I made you wait in line that day, and called you James Franco. But now, _now_ it feels like—I’ve been here before. You remember me, that’s why you can draw me so well. I know you from somewhere.”

 

Sebastian doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything so romantic, or so loopy, in his life. But the journey as an artist is to define the undefinable. What they’ve done certainly escapes definition.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S., I borrowed that "painting your portrait" line from [a movie called P.S.](https://youtu.be/MkByB3aDRnE?t=1586)
> 
> P.S.S., I borrowed "Is this shade or an actual compliment?" from [an actual Grant Gustin tweet](https://twitter.com/grantgust/status/746713289418145792) lol


End file.
